


In Cups of Coffee

by 37Cats



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Domestic, Episode: s08e16 Remember the Titans, F/F, Post-Episode: s08e16 Remember the Titans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 12:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/37Cats/pseuds/37Cats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It doesn't really go back to normal.  It should, but it doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Cups of Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm thinking this will probably be a series of loosely connected snippets. I don't really have any sort of plot ideas, but I sure do like poking at the situation, so there probably will be more of it.

It’s not ideal, but then, what is when you’re a single parent?    
  
It’s never been ideal, and there’s no reason why it should seem harder now that Shane is dead and gone for real, but somehow it seems like it is.  All the daydreams she had, all the nighttime musings, all those times when she could escape into some fantasy of a perfect world where her son had a father, all of that is really gone now.  Even the possibility is gone.  She’ll never even get the chance.

* * *

  
Shane has always been a hole in their life.  Hayley’s never really seen him in Oliver.  She sees her father in the arch of his eyebrow and the curve of his chin.  She sees her mother in his timid, hidden smiles.  She even sees herself in the brief moments when Oliver throws back his head and laughs, but she’s never really seen Shane.    
  
 Now she wonders if perhaps she just didn’t know what to look for.  If perhaps Shane is in Oliver’s eyes when they go flat and distant, if it is Shane that gives him his gravity and his brief moments of improbable age.    
  
Maybe all the queer and worrying moments Hayley has had, all those times when she looked across the dinner table and caught a glimpse of something alien, maybe what she was seeing all along was Shane. 

Should that be more or less worrying?  The knowledge that whatever immortal burden weighing down her child has been there all along, that it did not start when he turned seven, that it has been acting upon him all along, shouldn’t that split her open?

* * *

  
Is it laughable that they go back to normal? 

They burn Shane with the Winchesters, they get back in the car, and they are home in time for school and work on Monday. They go on.  There are gods and ghosts and actual mythical creatures out there in the world and Hayley smiles at her boss on Monday morning and life just goes on.

* * *

  
Oliver turns ten during a thunderstorm.  It’s not big.  Not apocalyptic.  Not even newsworthy.  No one dies, although the wind brings down a few branches on the big tree out front.  It wouldn’t be noteworthy except that Oliver is who he is, and so Hayley sits up the entire night, drinking tea and flinching at the lightning.  
  
She falls asleep at the kitchen table and when she wakes up Artemis is putting a cup of coffee down in front of her.    
  
‘Thank you,” Hayley says, and watches as a greek god thumps around in her kitchen, cracking eggs with more force than is probably necessary and pulling vegetables out of the fridge that Hayley is sure she didn’t buy.  
  
Oliver stumbles down not too long after, looking bleary eyed and ruffled, and pauses in the doorway.  Artemis looks up from the stove and the moment seems to catch, the two of them frozen in some sort of silent communication that Hayley will never be able to parse, but that still leaves her breathless and clutching tightly to her coffee cup.  Finally Oliver dips his head, not in surrender but in acknowledgement.  
  
“Happy birthday,” the goddess says solemnly.  “I have made omelets.”  
  
They’re pretty good omelets.  A little strongly seasoned with some spice Hayley can’t quite identify, but very cheesy and filling all the same.  
  
They spend the rest of the day sprawled in front of the TV watching ridiculous cartoons and Oliver laughs and laughs.  

* * *

  
When Hayley is getting ready for bed that night she realizes that she can’t remember the exact moment the goddess left, instead all she can call up is the feeling of a slow fade.  In her memories the presence on the couch next to her distorts and blurs, colors running together like sidewalk chalk in the rain.  There was no moment of leave-taking and Hayley has the creeping suspicion that, if she were to turn her head at just the right angle and un-focus her eyes in just the right way, she would see more than just darkness in the shadows smudging the corners of her bedroom.  
  
She sleeps well that night and that, of everything, is what finally scares her.


End file.
